A Series of Ficlets
by kaffeflote
Summary: Ficlet, n. a fanfiction of the length roughly 100-2500 words. longer than a drabble (100 words), but still short.
1. Chapter 1: viridity, n naive innocence

_ficlet, n. a fanfiction of the length roughly 100-2500 words. longer than a drabble (100 words), but still short._

 _A series of ficlets based on one-word prompts, to get into the habit of writing more. Tags added as time goes on, eventual warnings will be added in the notes to each chapter. The goal is one chapter a week, but don't hold me to that. (Also, please excuse any americanisms; I am not british, so please either point it out or ignore it. If pointed out i'll do my best to correct it.) Crossposted to AO3._

* * *

 _viridity, n. naive innocence_

Minerva can't stop staring, or feeling a painful burning in her chest.

As the doors of the Great Hall open and the first years walk in, looking around the room and clinging together in a mixture of fear and amazement, she can't help but mirror their emotions. Her heartstrings pull bitterly as the last few straggle in, and one little girl in the front points at the enchanted ceiling with a smile.

They're so small.

Of course they're small, they're eleven years old, just like the first years always are. She knows this, of course she does, she's spent the last decades of her life teaching them, and until this year showing them in to the Hall.

But they stand there- here, they stand here, in the middle of the Great Hall, in the same place the dead were placed out on the floor just months ago, in the same room where the monster who had murdered countless innocents had fallen to the floor in a boneless heap, in the same school where entire corridors had been blown apart and made unnavigable, and they're so small and unaware of where they are, of who they are. Some, she knows, know exactly where they are - too many; a single child knowing of the horrors that took place where they stand is a child too many, and yet, so shortly after the Battle, it is inevitable. Either they have lost someone, or someone they know have lost someone, or someone they know was here, here on that day when over 50 people died in a school.

Minerva stands up and clears her throat, a silence falls through the Great Hall, and as the girl in the front of the crowd of first years pulls down her hand to pay attention, she vows to never let that happen in her school again.


	2. 2, latibule

_latibule, n. a hiding place; a place of safety and comfort_

* * *

Thinking about the future for any length of time left him paralysed and breathing shallowly - perhaps what he deserves, after his past actions, but inconvenient nonetheless. He's currently in the bathroom - not Myrtle's, he doubts she'd want anything to do with him at this point. It's a mostly abandoned one on the fourth floor, past a corridor that was destroyed last May, and has become the perfect hiding spot and refuge from curious or aggressive students.

The room itself is mostly untouched, and there's a nook between the sinks and the windows overlooking the grounds that fits him perfectly, curled up with his knees to his chest. His bag is lazily discarded a few feet away on the floor, and he idly hoped nothing will fall out.

In all honesty, it's a miracle he's back in the castle at all - just four months ago he thought he'd be locked in Azkaban for life, but here he is, walking around the very place he had a hand in trying to destroy, free to walk amongst and talk to students who were hurt by his actions, directly or indirectly.

He's back in the castle, but he is by no means an optimist, or blind to what will happen once the year is out.

The future holds nothing for him, he is fully aware. The Malfoy name doesn't exist anymore- or well, it does, but not in a good way. The only way he'll be able to get any job is by moving (running, more accurately, but he doesn't want to call it that), or if someone takes pity on him, which he also doesn't want.

He has nothing to reach for anymore, no dreams to move towards. After Hogwarts, in all likelihood he'll end up back at the Manor with his mother, but then what? What will he do? No one will hire him, and no one, at least not in the coming decade or so, will bother or dare to take pity on him. He won't be able to work, neither will his mother, and whatever scraps of money she'd managed to keep won't last long.

His watch chimes, bringing him back to the present-

He's got Transfiguration in ten minutes, He takes a deep breath and stands up, smoothing his robes and picking up his book-bag. His future is uncertain - almost certainly doomed, the only real question is how - but he's in Hogwarts now. Within these walls, ironically after what he's done to it and people inside it, he's safe here. He can breathe, at least for another year.


	3. 3, nemophilist

_nemophilist, adj. a lover of the woods_

* * *

The woods are quiet this early in the morning, and the everything is covered in a layer of glittering frost.

Well, Luna supposes, it's almost always quiet in the Forbidden Forest; the occasional bird might titter or hoot, but the centaurs stick to themselves, far away from the castle and its noisy humans, and the thestrals tend to be quiet as well and stay in the darker areas of the forest, not eager to be spotted on the snowy grounds.

To boot, winter has spread rapidly and early this year, leaving the forest emptier and more still and silent than it usually would be, or at least how Luna remembers it.

The birds have all gone, the owls content up in the towers and the common rooms, and the rabbits and rats and mice and all the other small creatures that call the forest their home are all either curled up in their dens with their families, far away in warmer places, or succumbed to the bitter winds.

Some might have called it eerie, or dead, and perhaps it is a bit morbid that all the life seems to have fled or hidden away.

Luna finds she doesn't much mind the quiet, or the cold.


End file.
